The present invention relates to automatic method and apparatus for scattering wood pieces in production of a decorative board, and more particularly relates to improvement in production of a decorative board containing wood pieces such as flakes and/or chips on the top surface used for surface covering of various furniture, building materials and car interior decoration.
In most popular production of such a decorative board, a base board is impregnated with a resin mixture to form a prepregnated sheet, small wood chips are scattered on the top surface of the prepregnated sheet by operator's hands or by use of a sieve and the combination is subjected to a proper heat treatment.
Such a manner of dispersed deposition of the chips, however, is very low in productivity due to rather slow rate of scattering of the chips. In addition, manual scattering cannot always assure formation of a uniform pattern on the top surface of the decorative board. Further, presence of a human factor makes it difficult to reproduce the pattern with commercially acceptable fidelity.